Out of the Dark (13 page)

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Historical Paranormal Romance by Jennifer Blake
SAMPLE

~ CHAPTER 1 ~

Carita
Grey was not afraid of ghosts or goblins or any other creature of darkness, real or imagined. That was why she was always given the evening errands, such as taking the vicious boxer dog belonging to the widowed aunt with whom she lived for his walk before bedtime or going for the doctor when there was illness in the house. It was why she was out tonight, collecting the flower vase left behind after the decoration of the cemetery for All Saints' Day. It was also the reason she failed to retreat when she saw the stranger sitting on the raised family tomb.

The gentleman was not particularly threatening. He was, in fact, immensely polite, rising to his feet with lithe grace, sweeping off his high silk hat, executing his bow with all the polish of a courtier before a queen. Nor was there anything to distress her in the way he looked: his handsome features and tall, broad form were too pleasing, if anything. Still, there was something about him as he stood there in the light of the rising moon with the white marble sepulchers of New Orleans' City of the Dead gleaming around him that set alarm bells clanging in her mind. That was even before he spoke.

“What kept you,
chère
?” he said. “I've been waiting for hours.”

Carita
felt the rich tone of his voice, with its shading of familiarity and wry humor, vibrate deep inside her. It set off a rush of fierce longing that expanded, crowding out thought, heating her heart, weighting her lower body while her mind swam with the euphoric intoxication. The sensation was like nothing she had ever known, a consuming flame of purest concupiscence. Startled, unbelieving, she was defenseless against it.

The man's rigorously sculpted features softened. He transferred his hat to the same hand which held his cane, then reached out to her. As he moved forward, his long cape billowed to expose the red silk lining inside the dark folds. It made him look, for an instant, like a hawk swooping down on its prey.

“No!” she said on a quick gasp. Shuddering at the effort, she stepped backward beyond any possibility of physical contact.

He stopped and let his hand drop to his side. A waiting stillness settled over him while he regarded her with distracted care, as if listening to her panicked breathing, absorbing her reluctance. Beyond the brick and wrought iron cemetery fence, a carriage rattled past at a slow pace and faded into the night.

As quiet closed in on them once more, he said simply, “Why?”

“You—you must be mistaken in who I am, sir.” She clasped her hands tightly together at her waist under the slits of her short velvet cloak.

His mouth, sensual in its chiseled curves, exquisitely tender in the tucked corners, curved in amusement. He said, “Oh, I don't believe so.”

“Well, I certainly don't know you! And if you will permit me to pass, I have to retrieve—”

“
Renfrey
.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“My name. You did not know it.”

The tenderness of his voice was like a caress.
Carita
did her best to ignore it. With great firmness, she said, “Yes, well, but your saying so can hardly be called an acceptable introduction, can it? As I was saying, there is a vase behind you left by my Aunt
Berthe
that I must—”

“It’s worthless. I wouldn't trouble myself over it.” The words were judicious and dismissive. He paused, then said in intent demand, “How are you called?”

“
Carita
. It's odd, I know, but was an endearment my father used, so had special meaning to my mother before—” She halted, amazed at herself for saying so much when she had meant to say nothing at all.

“Before she died?” he finished gently. “I was reading the engraving on her tomb, I think, just now.”

Carita
looked beyond him to where a bouquet of wilting chrysanthemums and wild ageratum tied with black ribbon streamers lay on the couch-like foundation of the family resting place. There were roses there, also—a huge mass of late fall blooms. How fresh they looked, as if just cut. She didn't remember her aunt bringing them. Who had?

She gave the man before her an inquiring frown. At that moment, a
luna
moth of enormous size fluttered from the ranks of tombs. Pale gold, ethereal, it drifted about their heads, then settled on
Renfrey's
broad, black-clad shoulder like a gentle, moon-dusted ghost.

And abruptly
Carita's
every sense was exquisitely alive.

How delightful the night was; she had hardly noticed before. Moonlight glinting on the dark and shiny leaves of the evergreen magnolia just beyond where they stood gave them the look of black crystal. The marble mausoleums and memorials that surrounded them were smoothly graceful and touched with peace, while the planes and angles of their shadows were velvet-edged and inviting.

She could smell the delicious scent of the roses on her mother's tomb, and from some nearby garden sweet olive drenched the air with its honeyed seduction. She identified the mustiness of decay on the withering seed pods of the magnolia, caught the dry herbal mustiness of the lantana where it grew against a headstone. The scents of parched grass and old bones hovered near.

In the mausoleum just over there, a mouse scuffled, making a nest. At the wrought iron fence, a stray cat, gray with night, weaved in and out between the palings; he had not yet detected the mouse.

The wind on her face had currents of coolness and warmth, of spice and sweetness, as if some portions of it had traveled from the snow-capped Andes while others had last drifted through nutmeg groves or over the heated sugar cane fields of a Caribbean isle. The brush of it against her skin was a languid, inciting caress. The breeze sighed through the row of cedars not far away and clattered in the magnolia leaves. It tinkled a wind chime left hanging in a distant marble tomb's doorway, and the faint, minor sound was like the passing of a soul.

A wisp of pale hair, turned platinum-and-gilt by moonlight, loosened from her chignon and blew around her face in shining filaments. As
Carita
caught it back with one hand, holding it, she wondered if her eyes were as night-black as those of the man who watched her.

“Your mother,” he said softly, “how did she die?”

“How?” she answered almost at random in her distraction. “She was killed by an excess of loving.”

“You mean she met death in childbirth?” He tilted his head as he waited for her answer. At the movement, the great
luna
moth lifted from his cape and meandered into the darkness. Without its soft presence, they were incredibly alone.

“So many do, don't they?” she answered. “They are here, lying all around us so quiet and still, many with the tiny babe at their side or enclosed within their bones. But no. My mother was loved too well. Her heart could not sustain it; it just—stopped.”

“Is there such a thing as too much love?”

~~

END OF SAMPLE

In Jennifer Blake’s
The Warlock’s Daughter,
Carita
thinks she knows the answer to the mysterious stranger’s unexpected question—but does she really? Visit the Steel Magnolia Press website at
www.steelmagnoliapress.com
where you can purchase this novella and other passion-filled romances direct from your favorite outlet.